Alaska Housing Finance Corp. is moving forward in its effort to help provide housing for homeless residents.
The statewide homeless housing office within AHFC’s facilities in Anchorage will be modeled after AHFC’s senior housing office, with no additional funding required, according to a statement released Jan. 26 by Gov. Bill Walker’s office.
Instead AHFC is realigning support staff’s workload to provide technical assistance to nonprofit and supportive housing providers and to connect homeless people with available resources.
Walker said AHFC’s plans reflect their commitment to his priorities of building resilient communities and creating a safer Alaska by addressing homelessness across the state.
Bryan Butcher, executive director of AHFC and chair of the Alaska Council on the Homeless, said his office would offer counseling for those ready to advance project funding requests.
AHFC’s basic homeless assistance program currently assists homeless and near-homeless Alaskans by providing operating support for emergency shelter and transitional housing facilities, permanent housing placement and prevention services. In fiscal 2015, 40 agencies were awarded funding through this program to service 20 communities, including Cordova.
